八十岁的卢拉，第四次当上巴西总统

Fifty-two to forty-eight.

This is the result of Brazil's presidential election on the evening of October 25th.

Lula won, but nearly half of Brazilians did not vote for him.

This result brought his victory and his difficulties together.

His victory was a rare comeback in Brazil.

On October 4th, in the first round of voting, he had two million fewer votes than Bolsonaro.

At that time, media polls all said he would lose.

The candidates who did not win in the first round received a total of eight percent of the votes.

These votes later all went to Bolsonaro.

Starting in 1985, Brazil had democratic elections.

After that, no one who lost the first round had ever been able to win.

Lula was the first.

But many people already disliked his party.

His party had been in power for eighteen of the past twenty-four years.

Many people felt it was time to change to someone else.

In three weeks, his votes increased by ten million.

Many of the people who gave him these votes had not voted in the first round.

Some had cast useless ballots the first time.

He did three things.

First, he stopped hiding his head.

He had surgery on his head, which left a scar.

The hat hid this scar, and it also hid him.

He took the hat off.

Many people saw his head for the first time and found that he was not that old.

Second, he learned to use a mobile phone.

Before, he did not even own a mobile phone.

Before the first round of voting, Bolsonaro spent at least two million dollars online.

Lula spent only five hundred thousand dollars.

But many people watched Lula's videos.

The person assisting him was Janones, a forty-two-year-old congressman.

Janones set up a group on his phone called Lula's Army.

In two weeks, this group had more than ten million members.

He gave everyone in the group tasks.

For example, posting Lula's photo online.

Lula quickly became popular online.

After winning, Lula promised that the internet would be very important in his future work.

Third, the government began handing out money.

The government raised welfare payments by fifteen percent.

He got Congress to pass a law reducing the work week by one day, with no change in pay.

Public transport is free on weekends.

People who run their own businesses can each get one thousand dollars, one million people in total.

In Brazil, giving things out before elections is very common.

But this time, far more was given than before.

There were also Bolsonaro's own problems.

Some suspect he has ties to the militias in Rio.

The militias do bad things, such as killing people.

When he was a congressman, he awarded a medal to the leader of a militia.

This leader had killed people and later went to prison.

Later, this man's wife and mother were both on Bolsonaro's payroll.

Bolsonaro said he did not know about this.

In 2023, he again sent more than forty thousand dollars to a man who had killed someone.

That person was later arrested.

On the phone, that person called him our congressman.

Bolsonaro denied this.

Two weeks after the first round of voting, a friend of his in Rio was taken away by the police.

On October 23rd, the last televised debate.

Bolsonaro is a lawyer, and someone asked him about a case.

In that case, he spoke up for a policeman.

This policeman was accused of killing a five-year-old girl.

The girl's mother was sitting right there in the audience.

He said the mother's name as her daughter's name.

Her daughter was already dead.

Many women were very upset after watching this.

A woman who works in Rio said she voted for Bolsonaro the first time and for Lula the second time.

She said she could not accept that scene.

The day before the vote, there was another news story.

Several people who wanted to sell vaccines held a party for Bolsonaro on a boat.

There were also three women on the boat.

This news made many people dislike him even more.

On the evening of October 25th, Brazilians learned the final result.

Fifty-two percent of the votes went to Lula.

Bolsonaro's votes were forty-eight percent.

Nearly half of Brazilians still voted for Bolsonaro.

They did not think those problems were important.

Bolsonaro said he wanted to cancel the result of this presidential election.

He said the weather was bad, there were transport problems, and some people could not vote.

The Supreme Court made voting hours longer.

But the one who asked for more time was Bolsonaro himself.

Trump might help him.

Trump and many presidents in this region might help Bolsonaro.

Lula won, but he has to face a divided country.

Among the members of Congress, Bolsonaro's people are the most numerous.

His wife, brother and two sons are all congressmen now.

This makes it very hard for Lula to push his policies.

He is eighty years old, and the law does not allow him to run again.

He wants to be a good president, but he does not have much time.

So he may have a hard time working from the very start.

The economy is the government's biggest challenge.

In four years, the government's debt rose by more than ten points.

The market is very worried, so the cost of borrowing is high.

The market needs the government to give stable policies.

He has to reduce government spending to stabilize the market.

But he spent too much money before the election.

So many people doubt whether he can do it.

He also has to face challenges from Congress.

He has not yet said what specific measures he will take.

There are also some questions with no answers.

Will the Bolsonaro family continue to control Congress?

Will this victory be just a four-year break?

Will Trump help Bolsonaro?

Can Lula do a good job with a congress like this?

These questions all have no answers right now.

Lula won a very difficult election.

If he wants to do this job well, he will have to win again.